It was still dark as Julian Camacho flagged down workers driving in for their shift. One by one, he handed them a leaflet while dozens of picketers crisscrossed the parking lot entrance, chanting in the morning chill before the sun rose over Tracy, California.

Julian knows these people. He used to work alongside them – cutting, washing, packaging, and loading salads and other food for Taylor Farms, the largest supplier of fresh-cut produce in the country.

But when Julian became involved in a campaign to organize a union at his plant, the company fired him.

“I was fired after four years of working at Taylor Farms,” he said. “We have the right to stand up and organize for better working conditions, but Taylor Farms clearly does not respect that and it doesn’t respect its workers – they just want to silence us.”

Julian isn’t alone. He joined hundreds of other workers and supporters for a one-day strike against unfair labor practices on December 19. Like Julian, two other workers have been terminated for their union support. Among the workers at the company’s two plants in Tracy, a large majority have signed union cards. They say they deserve more than poverty wages and the mistreatment that management inflicts on its workforce.

Much like the fast-food and retail employees whose protests for living wages have spread across the country, Julian and Taylor Farms workers are part of a national wave of unrest against low wages in the food industry. The only thing that sets Taylor Farms workers apart from striking McDonald’s and Walmart workers is their position in the industry’s supply chain. They supply food to McDonald’s, Walmart and other major fast-food establishments, retailers, chain restaurants and grocers. These workers are unseen to consumers and all the more vulnerable to the heavy hand of abusive employers.

What makes Taylor Farms workers even more vulnerable is their position as immigrants, both documented and undocumented. The company has been keen on using that against its workers ever since they started organizing with Teamsters Local 601. Workers in Tracy report being threatened with deportation, E-Verify and other forms of immigration enforcement in retaliation for their union support.

UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES AND OTHER INDIGNITIES

On the picket line, workers and supporters brandished signs and banners that read “We Will Not Be Silenced” and “Stop the War on Immigrant Workers.” Julian was later joined by Brandon, a young man who has been working at Taylor Farms for ten years. He started working on the plant’s onion line when he was 9 years old. Brandon wants to go to school, but the company changes his schedule every time he tries to schedule classes.

Taylor Farms workers want more than a living wage. They want respect and dignity in the workplace. Instead, they endure unsafe working conditions and the company’s routine termination of workers who are injured on the job.

The company denies basic accommodations to pregnant workers, forcing one woman to resign and lose six months of wages while she scraped by on food stamps. Another worker is reduced to living out of his car so that he can afford out-of-pocket costs for his daughter’s health care. Still others are denied protective gear, causing gagging and other health problems for workers exposed to chemical fumes. The company often denies workers their meal breaks and pressures them against using the restroom during their shift.

So on a windy Thursday before Christmas, Teamster members in the region joined Taylor Farms workers and community allies in an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike against the company. Pickets assembled at 4 am while a team of mobile picketers hit Teamster-represented workplaces supplied by Taylor Farms, including Raley’s and C & S Wholesale Grocers. Several trucks making deliveries to the plants in Tracy respected the picket line, turning their 18-wheel rigs around and leaving goods undelivered.

The union has filed charges for hundreds of ULP violations committed by the company at both plants in Tracy. With decades of experience in union drives across many industries, organizers on the campaign say the sheer volume of ULP violations committed by Taylor Farms is overwhelming and perhaps even unprecedented.

A VICIOUS ANTI-UNION CAMPAIGN

The Teamster organizing campaign at Taylor Farms began in September. And despite the fact that over 2,500 workers at Taylor Farms’ plant in Salinas are represented by Teamsters and have a union contract, the company immediately responded to organizing efforts in Tracy with a fierce anti-union drive.

The company’s campaign against the union is backed by high-priced attorneys who specialize in “union avoidance.” One firm the company has used is Industrial Relations Consultants, Inc., which boasts its ability to help “manage Hispanic and other ethnic workers and assist our clients in remaining or becoming non-union.”

Further complicating the workers’ organizing campaign is the fact that many of the workers at the plants in Tracy are not direct Taylor Farms employees. The company relies on two “temp agencies” – Abel Mendoza and Sling Shot – to staff a large portion of its operations. One of the agencies is located right outside of the Taylor Farms plant on MacArthur Drive, giving the company easy access to flexible labor and protecting it from any legal consequences associated with employing undocumented workers.

The company’s war on its immigrant workforce has included mandatory anti-union meetings, posting anti-union propaganda in break rooms and forcing workers to wear shirts that say “I Love Taylor Farms.” But threatening workers based on their immigration status has been the company’s primary weapon against the union drive at Taylor Farms.

IMMIGRANT RIGHTS – IT’S THE LAW

Taylor Farms’ repeated violations of immigrant workers’ rights is technically illegal. But a trio of new laws passed in California adds tougher sanctions against employers who break the law by abusing their immigrant workforce.

“This community and the state of California will not accept the abusive and illegal practices that Taylor Farms is alleged to have committed against its workers,” said California Assemblymember Roger Hernandez who spoke at a rally in front of Taylor Farms on the day of the strike. Hernandez led the California legislature in passing AB 263, a new immigrant anti-retaliation law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown along with AB 524 and SB 666.

The laws, which took effect on January 1, 2014, prohibit immigration-related retaliation and classify the threat to expose workers’ immigration status as extortion. Companies in violation of the new laws could face criminal penalties.

“The stories I’ve heard from workers like you compelled me to introduce legislation last year that prohibits employers from retaliating against workers such as yourselves for exercising protected rights,” Hernandez told workers at the rally. “I could not have moved that legislation forward without the heavy support and push of the Teamsters Union – that’s how we got it to the governor’s desk.”

“I strongly believe that Taylor Farms can afford to treat its workers with dignity and respect. This is not a mom-and-pop business. Last year Taylor Farms had an estimated revenue of $1.8 billion. They supply produce to some of the largest companies in the world, including Walmart and McDonald’s,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez added that he is deeply troubled by reports that the company has used immigration status as a threat to silence workers who are trying to organize. “We will no longer stand for such behavior,” he said.

One of the central demands of the recent ULP strike was that the company reinstate unjustly fired workers like Julian. Two other fired workers, Eddy Rodriguez and Julio Munguia, also spoke at the rally.

“Taylor Farms treats its workers in Tracy like dirt,” said Rodriguez. “I wanted a better life for me and my coworkers – and for that I was fired.”

BIG BUSINESS, BIG BULLY

Hernandez is right about the size of Taylor Farms’ business. The company has operations in ten states and in Mexico. It employs up to 7,000 workers who manufacture and distribute prepackaged salads and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables to major companies like McDonald’s, Subway, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Darden Restaurants and retailers like Walmart and Kroger.

Still, Taylor Farms CEO Bruce Taylor insists that his workers are his “family,” according to an article he wrote in the BerkleyHaas alumni magazine in 2012. The workers in Tracy don’t feel they’ve been treated that way. And the company’s overall track record certainly tells a different story.

Production workers in Tracy, such as those who work on the tomato line, work up to 17 hours a day and five days a week or more during the busy season. They typically make $8 an hour. Taylor Farms has accumulated over $80,000 in OSHA penalties in the last five years. It also faces an ongoing class-action case for requiring employees to work off-the-clock and without pay. In Tracy, workers are penalized by the company for taking time off due to illness. They are denied workers’ compensation when they are injured on the job. And workers also say that complaining about safety issues or not being paid for overtime often results in being fired.

One worker recently quit after 17 years with the company. The physically-demanding, repetitive work had taken a toll on her body and she was having major health problems. She repeatedly asked to be moved to a position that would involve different repetitive motion, but the company refused. So she was forced to quit. She received no workers’ compensation, no retirement benefits – nothing.

Workers in Tracy say the company has cracked down ruthlessly on union supporters. Managers and supervisors have taken to accusing pro-union workers of sabotage. Workers have been told they will lose their jobs if they join the union. They’ve also been told they are prohibited from talking about the union at work.

But the company isn’t satisfied with making its workers afraid of the union. It wants its workers to be actively hostile to the organizing drive. Recently workers were taken to a manager’s office and told to sign an anti-union petition. Workers inside one of the plants report being forced to join supervisors and managers for a counter-demonstration against the union during the strike. Supervisors held signs that said “Union Go Away.” But more offensive than that was hearing the plant manager lead a chant of “No se pudo” (You can’t) – a cynical and ugly twist on the popular slogan “Sí se puede” (Yes we can) made famous by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.

So why is Taylor Farms reacting so mercilessly to organizing efforts in Tracy? It could be because it knows what a Teamster-represented shop within the company looks like. Teamsters Local 890 represents some 2,500 workers at Taylor Farms in Salinas. The union contract there provides a grievance procedure, safeguards against favoritism, protective gear for worker safety, regular pay raises, fair treatment of injured workers, affordable health insurance, paid sick time, and paid holidays.

FEEDING THE FAMILIES THAT FEED THE NATION

Taylor Farms may also be worried about what a victory for its workers in Tracy might mean across the food processing industry in California’s Central Valley. It is a cruel irony that this region that produces a quarter of the food that Americans consume also experiences some of the highest levels of hunger and poverty in the country.

The Teamsters say the campaign at Taylor Farms is part of a larger coalition effort to organize and build political power for Latinos in the region. The food processing workers in the valley may yet open a new front in the national strike movement against the low-wage economy. Those strikes have been bubbling further up the supply chain at fast-food restaurants and Walmart stores. But they’ve also been simmering behind the scenes among warehouse workers, port truck drivers and low-wage government contractors.

Taylor Farms workers are calling attention to the fact that poverty wages and disrespect for workers’ rights isn’t merely a fast-food problem, or a Walmart problem. It’s a problem that afflicts workers up and down supply chains across multiple industries. It’s a national problem.

Back in Tracy, workers and organizers are discussing next steps for the campaign to win justice at Taylor Farms. On the day of the strike, a worker getting off of her shift walked out to the parking lot entrance where Julian and others were still picketing. She wore a Teamster t-shirt underneath her black snow pants overalls that workers wear to protect them from cold temperatures in the plant.

“Sí se puede,” she said to Julian as she walked by, thrusting her fist in the air.

Julian hopes the union will win his job back. But the organizing struggle at Taylor Farms is about something even more fundamental than his job. It’s about the basic right of human beings – no matter where they work and no matter where they come from – to be treated with dignity and respect.

More than any job, that’s what Julian and his coworkers are fighting for at Taylor Farms.

]]>https://subterraneandispatches.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/low-wage-movement-strikes-food-processing-at-taylor-farms/feed/0insurgentreportsIMG_0164DC Mayor Vetoes Living-Wage Bill, Endorses Walmart Poverty Wageshttps://subterraneandispatches.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/dc-mayor-vetoes-living-wage-bill-endorses-walmart-poverty-wages/
https://subterraneandispatches.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/dc-mayor-vetoes-living-wage-bill-endorses-walmart-poverty-wages/#commentsThu, 12 Sep 2013 17:00:11 +0000http://subterraneandispatches.wordpress.com/?p=997]]>Walmart won another battle in its war on workers this morning as Washington, DC Mayor Vincent Gray vetoed the Large Retailer Accountability Act. With Walmart planning its entry into the DC market, the legislation would require the company and other big-box retailers to pay a minimum of $12.50 an hour in wages and benefits.

The debate over the bill, the Large Retailer Accountability Act, has polarized local leaders while garnering national attention and putting focus on the low wages many retail chains pay their workers.

But Gray made no secret in recent months that, for him, jobs and retail took priority.

Wal-Mart’s entry into the city was an early political coup for Gray, and he personally lobbied — some say threatened — top company executives to commit to a store at the Skyland Town Center development not far from Gray’s home in Ward 7.

The Skyland store is among those Wal-Mart has threatened to abandon should the living-wage bill become law.

Sure enough, in announcing his veto Gray pretended to be a supporter of living wages in general while calling the LRAA a “job-killer.”

So much for standing up to Walmart’s bullying. And so much for bucking the national trend in which the only significant job growth is happening in low-wage industries.

Unfortunately, today’s veto decision was not surprising given Gray’s cozy relationship with the Walmart. “With the stroke of a veto pen any day now, Mr. Gray appears poised to deal another victory to the retail giant,” wrote labor reporter Josh Eidelson just hours before Gray’s decision was announced.

City activists have been pushing for months to make the LRAA law, making the nation’s capital a flashpoint in the struggle between workers and Walmart’s low-wage empire. LRAA supporters are now turning to the city council in the hopes that a follow-up vote next week will override the mayor’s veto.

The LRAA would not affect Walmart alone. It targets retailers with corporate sales of $1 billion or more and stores of at least 75,000 square feet. But Walmart has been the focus of the bill because of its vocal opposition to the LRAA and its plan to build six Walmart stores in a city that is Walmart-free.

Walmart’s profits in the second quarter this year were over $4 billion. It can easily afford paying DC workers $12.50. In fact, a year ago the retailer told DC community leadersit would pay even more — $13 an hour. The living-wage bill called Walmart’s bluff. It never intended to pay $13 an hour.

Respect DC, a coalition of groups in favor of the living-wage bill, quoted DC residents and figures reacting to Gray’s veto. “Mayor Gray had the opportunity to stand up for the residents of this city, but instead he allowed large, out of town companies, like Walmart, to threaten him and ultimately dictate the policies of our city,” said one Macy’s employee and DC resident. “By vetoing this bill he has further eroded the ability of DC residents and workers to earn enough money to take care of themselves and their families while remaining in the city.”

DC community leader and labor supporter Rev. Graylan Hagler urged the city council to override the mayor’s veto. “Unfortunately, the Mayor’s decision is hardly surprising because this is exactly what Walmart’s lobbyists said would happen. The Mayor’s office and Walmart have been working together to defeat this bill from the start. We strongly urge the city council to override this misguided veto,” he said.

Today’s news is a blow against workers who have been fighting to change Walmart’s low-wage, anti-union business model. And it comes on the heels of a national one-day strike by Walmart workers that hit 15 cities just last week.

DC is not the first city to attempt to enforce living-wage standards on Walmart and other retailers. The city of Chicago tried to do the same thing in 2006 before the retailer got that city’s mayor to veto the bill. Chicago now has nine Walmart stores.

In 1962, Arkansas businessman Sam Walton opened the first Walmart discount store, setting in motion the rapid ascendance of a corporate giant that would redefine markets around the world. With its focus on competitive prices and vast distribution networks that revolutionized the industry, Walmart grew over the course of the 20th century to become the world’s largest company.

Today, its retail empire covers 15 countries with over 8,900 stores employing 2.2 million people. Like all empires, its success is built on contradictions and exploitation.

It’s no secret that Walmart’s low-cost business model relies heavily on paying its employees what can reasonably be called poverty wages. The average worker makes about $8.80 an hour. Even a full-time employee makes roughly $15,500 per year, well below the official poverty line for a family of four. Walmart’s low pay and poor-to-nonexistent benefits forces many of its workers to turn to public assistance in order to survive.

These conditions extend beyond the boundaries of Walmart’s own business. As a dominating force in the global economy, Walmart is a standard bearer across multiple industries. Its model of cost-cutting and squeezing workers has been adopted by competitors, suppliers and contractors alike.

Substandard wages are just one facet of the Walmart economy – just as notably, its stores have resisted workers’ attempts to unionize for their entire history. A recent wave of strikes by workers at Walmart stores and warehouses in the U.S. has challenged the mega-retailer’s sophisticated anti-union machinery. That machinery runs on a combination of intimidation, harassment, illegal firings, court injunctions, and systematic anti-union inoculation.

Walmart has successfully beaten back every attempt at unionization among its U.S. employees since the 1970s.

But the latest surge of labor unrest may signal a turning point for Walmart and its workers – and the labor movement.

Walmart has sparred with many groups that have raised concerns about its business practices, including community organizations, environmental groups and class actions. But robust “union avoidance” has been at the center of its operations for decades. A 1997 manual titled “A Manager’s Guide to Remaining Union-Free” instructs managers to be on constant alert for any signs of organizing among store associates, and derides labor unions as “a big business.”

In 2000, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) successfully organized meat cutters at a Walmart store in Texas. The company responded by closing its 180 meat counters and replacing them with prepackaged cuts. Walmart staved off other organizing efforts by UFCW and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in the 1990s and 2000s, and it quashed an earlier Teamster campaign to organize drivers the 1980s.

Then something different started happening in 2012.

In June, workers at CJ’s Seafood, a Walmart supplier in Louisiana, went on strike against wage theft and threats by management. The workers’ bold action forced Walmart to drop the supplier, while the Labor Department ordered CJ’s to pay over $200,000 in back wages. This spark ignited a much larger and unprecedented wave of strikes that spread through Walmart’s supply chain and hit hundreds of its stores nationwide.

Walmart warehouse workers in Southern California and Illinois launched a historic campaign in September. Under the banners of Warehouse Workers United and Warehouse Workers for Justice – two groups formed by the Change to Win labor federation and the United Electrical Workers (UE), respectively – workers and activists engaged in a series of walkouts and acts of civil disobedience highlighting dangerous working conditions, wage theft and intimidation.

Although it does not directly employ the striking warehouse workers, Walmart was the target of worker protests because it dictates industry standards for contractors in its network of distribution centers. This month, a California judge named Walmart as a defendant in a class action suit over wage theft at contractor warehouses, boosting warehouse workers’ claim that Walmart is responsible for conditions at supplier facilities. After 21 days on strike in September, Illinois warehouse workers won their principal demand for an end to company retaliation and received full back pay for the days they were out on strike.

Acting Like a Union

Inspired by this victory and the new vulnerability of Walmart that it exposed, store employees struck at 30 locations in 12 states in October. More job actions at other stores the following month helped to build momentum for the big day of action on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.

The Black Friday Rebellion was a massive step forward for the movement to change Walmart. Hundreds of store employees and thousands of supporters in 46 states took part in walkouts and rallies, demanding living wages, better conditions and respect on the job. The actions were buoyed by the effective use of traditional and social media that helped spread the walkouts and win public sympathy for the strikers.

Even while company spokespersons diminished the strikes and called them mere “publicity stunts,” Walmart filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that the rolling pickets were illegal because the workers had not begun working toward an NLRB election for union representation. But the new worker-powered formation that coordinated the Black Friday strikes has been clear that it is separate from UFCW. The Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart, is not a union. Although it is supported by UFCW and its community coalition, Making Change at Walmart, OUR Walmart’s protests are aimed at pressuring Walmart to improve working conditions, not unionization.

This is perhaps the most important thing to understand about the recent strikes at Walmart stores and what sets them apart from previous campaigns. Workers and labor organizers know that Walmart has mastered the process of cutting down traditional union organizing drives; now they are attempting to apply a different model of workplace organizing that circumvents the typical roadblocks built in to U.S. labor laws, a regime tilted against employees and one which Walmart is an expert at manipulating.

The alternative organizing strategies being attempted by Walmart workers could have implications throughout the labor movement. In particular, their emphasis on industry-wide mobilizing, disruptive tactics, and self-organization could help inject a new militancy into labor struggle.

OUR Walmart’s approach also differs from previous coalition efforts to change Walmart, which were focused more on disrupting its glossy public image. Union-backed groups like Wake Up Walmart and Walmart Watch ran campaigns in the 2000s that were less focused on worker involvement and more dedicated to media messaging designed to expose Walmart’s bad practices.

In contrast, OUR Walmart is a membership-based organization whose strength is defined by the size and activity of its membership rather than foundation funding and non-profit expertise. It began a year and a half ago with fewer than 100 members. Today it has over 1,000 members in chapters across 43 states. While it’s still too small to have a decisive impact on Walmart’s operations, its rapid growth and appeal among Walmart workers joining its ranks is remarkable.

Using management retaliation charges as the basis for work stoppages, OUR Walmart is able to secure some legal protection for non-union workers who otherwise have little recourse in taking collective action against their employer. Ultimately, OUR Walmart members would like to unionize Walmart stores, but that isn’t the immediate goal. For now, organizers are focused on growing an organization which they describe as “open source” in that it functions as a network providing tools for workers to self-organize.

“Workers can engage in actions that both make them feel powerful and that impact the company, and they don’t need to just spend their life waiting for some [government-supervised] processes to demonstrate they want a union,” former SEIU organizer Stephen Lerner told The Nation. Lerner, the originator of the Justice for Janitors campaign, argues that what’s important about OUR Walmart is that it’s acting like a union.

Striking Back Against the War on Workers

Another important part of the new Walmart campaign is the climate in which it’s unfolding.

Over the past two years, the labor movement has been under the gun of anti-union right-wing ideologues and austerity-driven politicians in both parties. Unions have suffered massive setbacks in states like Wisconsin, where tea party conservatives won an effort to strip collective bargaining rights in the public sector.

In 2012, two new states joined the ranks of so-called “right to work” states, bringing crippling restrictions on the collection of union dues to a region that has historically been a stronghold for labor. If the passage of right-to-work-for-less legislation in Indiana earlier in the year was a painful strike against unions, its recent and sudden passage in Michigan, the birthplace of the modern labor movement, was a devastating body blow.

In the meantime, working-class living standards continue to decline, as they have for decades. While income inequality has soared to levels not seen since the 1920s, the shrinking union movement has been largely on the defensive. The war against workers has accelerated since 2011 as unions find themselves embroiled in state-level battles in which their very existence is at stake.

Against this backdrop, it is significant that Walmart workers have chosen to go on the offensive. Workers are being battered in the private and public sectors, and unions have been making huge concessions in industries that have typically been more union-friendly in the past. Walmart workers have linked arms with allies in the labor movement to mount a highly organized and aggressive campaign in an environment that is quintessentially anti-labor.

“Walmart has designed a particular business model that demands inhumane and unsustainable working situations and poverty wages,” says UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend. “At a certain point, workers rebel, they push back. Walmart and the employers who imitate Walmart rely on astronomical turnover as a safety valve. But when workers stay on the job – now because of sheer desperation – more and more will choose to fight back rather than quit.”

Walmart isn’t the only place where workforce turmoil has given way to tenacity. On November 28, some 200 fast food workers from dozens of New York City restaurants staged a flash strike. Protesting the notorious low wages of fast food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell, workers risked retaliation and walked off the job in a rare strike targeting a mostly non-union industry. With the support of New York Communities for Change, the workers formed the Fast Food Workers Committee and have been aided by other community-based groups and SEIU.

Unlike OUR Walmart, the fast food workers are explicitly demanding a fair process to unionize at their restaurants. But the workers, most of whom make little more than minimum wage, are also asking for a raise to $15 an hour. It’s a bold demand, but it’s one that Townsend argues is desperately needed if labor is going to survive as a movement.

“One of the tragedies of the current moment is that just at the time when wages have hit sub-poverty levels, the labor movement as a whole is afraid to ask for a raise, or even resist the wage-cutting offensive of the employers,” he says. “Asking for a raise has been replaced by elaborate begging for ‘shared sacrifice.’ That’s not going to inspire anyone to join a union. Militant struggles demanding a raise are long overdue, especially in low-wage industries like retail and fast food.”

A New Era for Organized Labor?

The organizing model being pursued by both OUR Walmart and the Fast Food Workers Committee – using strikes to raise workplace demands prior to unionization – could point to a new era for organized labor in the U.S. as it adapts to an increasingly adversarial corporate and political environment.

Under the NLRB structure, unions gain recognition to represent workers based on exclusive representation of an entire worksite after majority support is demonstrated. Companies like Walmart easily use this structure to their advantage in blocking union drives, and the penalties they suffer for breaking the law are negligible at best.

That’s why organized labor and Walmart workers have turned to a model that resembles what’s known as minority unionism, a strategy that involves collective action to press for change before majority support among the workforce has been reached. It also relies on the collaboration among different unions to mobilize workers on a regional basis.

As labor reporter Josh Eidelson writes, union leverage under this model doesn’t hinge on majority representation at a single worksite. Instead, Walmart workers and organizers “are hoping that aggressive strikes will make majority support possible, rather than the other way around.”

However, the minority union model at Walmart is still experimental and its paradigm-shifting possibilities are yet to be seen.

“Most of the work is shaped and led in NGO form, and not traditional union form,” says Townsend. “That’s not necessarily a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ issue, but as is the case with all organizing, the ultimate goal is to construct union organizational structures which can continue as effective forces once the initial paid staff and NGO staff move on.”

Townsend argues that not many of the organizing efforts being undertaken – including UE’s – could stand for long without outside support, owing to Walmart’s fierce anti-union attacks.

Certainly, the wave of walkouts and protests in 2012 mark only the beginning of what will necessarily be a years-long campaign for justice at Walmart. But the workers have already made history by putting their jobs on the line and standing up against a juggernaut.

If there is a tipping point in the struggle between corporate America and workers, then we are surely on the verge of breaching it. Workers are being backed into a corner and increasingly have little to lose in fighting back. While companies like Walmart and McDonald’s have been abusing employer-friendly labor laws for decades to keep wages low and unions out of their businesses, corporate lobbyists and conservative billionaires have teamed up with politicians to chip away at the few protections and rights afforded to workers under existing labor law.

Walmart workers – who for so long have stood outside of the labor movement – may be clearing a new path toward a revived labor movement in the U.S. If they should fail, the race to the bottom for workers will continue uninterrupted.

But if they win, it will mean nothing less than the surrender of an empire and a path-breaking comeback for the working class.

After suffering almost two years of ramped up union-busting, the labor movement came out swinging in the recent elections. It swung its hardest in swing states like Ohio, delivering the 2012 presidential election to President Obama and propelling other labor-endorsed candidates to office.

Labor’s decisive role in reelecting Obama and boosting dozens of other Democrats in key races was acknowledged in the national press. And it was acknowledged by labor.

The day after the election, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said it was the labor unions that gave Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada to the president. After four years of repeated setbacks and betrayals by the Obama administration, unions reportedly spent up to $400 million on the elections this year.

And according to the AFL-CIO, thousands of volunteers in its affiliate unions knocked on more than 10 million doors nationwide in support of Obama and other labor-backed candidates. SEIU members knocked on another 5 million doors and, according to SEIU president Mary Kay Henry, the organization had 100,000 volunteers across the country as Election Day drew near.

So now the 400-million-dollar question: what does organized labor get in return for its effective ground game to reelect a president who has so often been a disappointment for unions?

Certainly, outside of the presidential race, unions helped carry progressives to the Senate like Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. Labor also helped Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown defend his seat while defeating a California ballot measure that would have silenced the political voice of unions.

At the presidential level, labor was pivotal to the resounding electoral rejection of the Romney-Ryan agenda. For now, the threat of a national right-to-work law championed by the White House has been beaten back. Attacks on workers and the poor by way of spending cuts will continue, but at least the austerity on steroids that the Republicans had in mind won’t take hold. And there will be no presidential bashing of an entire population for believing it is entitled to certain things it has paid for.

Romney’s loss was indeed a win for labor – as it was for women, immigrants, people of color, the LGBT community, and senior citizens. But was Obama’s victory a win for unions?

Unlike in 2008, labor unions weren’t telling their membership to reelect Obama and other Democrats in order to win new ground, like the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act of 2008 which would have made it easier for workers to unionize. Instead, labor mobilized its ranks for Obama to defend the ground it still has after two years of scorched-earth attacks on workers. Compared to the enthusiasm of 2008, labor’s electoral push in 2012 was motivated more by the desire to keep Mitt Romney out of the White House than to keep Obama in it.

And this was a sweet deal for the president. Obama could count on unions to fire up their vast get-out-the-vote operations against Romney without feeling the need to extend any empty promises to the labor movement.

Of course, there were some exceptions. Unions like the United Auto Workers and the Steelworkers campaigned more heavily on a pro-Obama message. But overall, labor’s rekindled loyalty to Obama was borne out of its rightful distain for the alternative and the fear of a Romney presidency.

Something did change after Election Day, though. When it was clear that unions could take credit for playing such a huge, if not decisive, role in Obama’s reelection, labor leaders spoke with a little more boldness.

“One thing that we’re doing different than we’ve ever done before is we’re not dismantling our program today,” Trumka told Salon.com reporter Josh Eidelson after the election. The AFL-CIO head said the federation would move “from electoral politics to advocacy, and from advocacy to accountability,” reaffirming a shift to aggressively defend Social Security and Medicare.

Trumka also said something after the victory that was absent from labor’s get-out-the-vote messaging in the months leading up to the election.

“We’re going to work to make sure that those broken labor laws get fixed because when workers have a voice on a job, it improves their lives, and it improves the economy as a whole,” said Trumka. “I’m not going to say the Employee Free Choice Act, but something that is comprehensive, that fixes the nation’s broken labor laws.” Trumka expressed optimism that labor law reform could be achieved in Congress during Obama’s second term.

Is this just the fleeting swagger of a union leader fired up after an election victory? Probably.

Obama has already made it clear that striking a “grand bargain” with Republicans to cut the deficit by $4 trillion is his top priority. If deficit hawks in both parties have their way, such a deal to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” will almost certainly include significant cuts and changes to Social Security and Medicare.

If labor leaders plan to make good on their promise to lead the charge in defense of these programs, it’s hard to imagine how they will also lead the kind of grassroots mobilization needed to win any substantive labor reform. And it’s even more doubtful that Obama will lift a finger in support of such an effort.

To be sure, there are many reasons for the labor movement to be relieved by Romney’s loss in the election. Romney was a boss’s boss – the epitome of the filthy rich 1 percent and its anti-worker animus.

As a private equity tycoon, Romney’s firm, Bain Capital, specialized in sucking companies dry and leaving workers out in the cold. He proudly championed a business model of shipping jobs overseas. Romney also supported Indiana’s right-to-work law, condemned Chicago teachers for going on strike, and said the National Labor Relations Board was stacked with “union stooges.”

Unions can at least look to Obama’s signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women, or his ostensibly union-friendly appointments to the NLRB. And there was also his rescue of the auto industry that saved thousands of union jobs, though workers took enormous concessions as part of that deal.

But at least these modest pro-labor moves by Obama help to distract from his administration’s many offenses against working-class priorities. Those include: a health care reform law that further entrenches the power of private insurance companies; the refusal to declare a moratorium on home foreclosures affecting millions of working people; the passage of anti-labor free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama; a pay freeze for federal workers; the largest cut in discretionary spending in 50 years; a record number of deportations of undocumented workers; concerted attacks on public education and teachers unions through corporate education “reform”; an FAA reauthorization bill that makes it more difficult for airline workers to organize; the failure to pass substantial financial reform to reign in Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail abuses and speculation schemes; the failure to pass a national jobs program; and, of course, the refusal to push for the now moribund Employee Free Choice Act.

And then there was the silence.

As the right to collective bargaining was thrust in the crosshairs of the billionaire Koch brothers and their tea party allies in statehouses around the country, Obama had little if anything to say in defense of labor. Fighting for their very survival, unions hoped for stronger advocacy from the White House, but Obama chose instead to stay above the fray – or below it.

Nevertheless, the alternative in this election was worse. And in every election cycle, this is the perennial two-party trap that saps the political strength of unions, however impressive their boots-on-the-ground electoral operations may be. Democrats know this and take full advantage of the lesser-evil politics driving millions of voters – who expect little in return – into their arms every four years.

Still, many liberals in the labor movement insist that the president is certain to be more aggressive in pursuing pro-labor policies in his second term, now freed from the political constraints of reelection that so repressed his progressive spirit during the first four years. A similar expectation prevailed among many on the left in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was running for reelection.

Yet it never happened. Clinton’s presidency remained defined by “ending welfare as we know it,” signing the anti-worker NAFTA trade deal, intensifying the war on drugs and prison expansion, and creating policies like “don’t ask, don’t tell” along with signing the Defense of Marriage Act.

This time around, Obama is already pursuing a deal with Republicans which, at best, will include modest tax increases on the wealthy that will be dwarfed by more spending cuts for workers. The president has also said he will lower corporate tax rates, which are effectively at the lowest level they’ve been in history.

Outside of Washington, workers continue to face the bludgeon of corporate greed. At Hostess, the iconic maker of Twinkies and other baked snacks, management used the company as its own personal piggy bank for speculative activity, driving the business into bankruptcy and extracting huge concessions from its unionized workforce.

Last week, after the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers International Union decided to draw the line and strike, Hostess said it would liquidate, leaving 18,500 workers jobless while blaming unions for the company’s failure. Mediation may save the company for now, but its bakers and Teamster truck drivers will suffer a steep drop in pay and benefits.

Despite the dire state of the working class and the routine betrayals committed by its supposed “allies” in Washington, there is another part of the story – and it involves a different kind of ground game in the field of grassroots struggle.

That struggle saw 45,000 Verizon workers striking against corporate greed last year and a militant showdown of Longshore workers against a shipping conglomerate in the Pacific Northwest. It summoned thousands of union supporters to state capitals in Wisconsin and Ohio, occupying buildings and pushing back against union-busting laws. It gave birth to a global movement of the 99 percent that rocked cities around the country and put economic inequality at the center of national consciousness.

Beyond the U.S., it ignited a sweeping fightback in Europe with waves of general strikes against austerity. It also showed how 26,000 Chicago teachers could organize and win an historic strike against a cut-throat anti-union mayor, striking a blow against the corporate school “reform” agenda.

And now, that struggle has led to an unprecedented campaign of protests and strikes among retail and warehouse workers who have long suffered in the shadows of Wal-Mart’s fiercely anti-union juggernaut.

In spite of the union movement’s strong ground game on Election Day, Obama and the Democrats will continue to faithfully carry the torch of austerity while Republicans try to stoke the flames. Unionists and the workers’ movement as a whole must use its weight to push back against the deepening anti-worker assaults orchestrated in Washington.

But we also have to invest in the other ground game – the game being played out on the shop floor and in the streets.

With enough practice, that’s a game the working class has a better chance of actually winning.

As this year’s election finally reaches its conclusion, working-class people will soon know who will drive the agenda of austerity over the next four years. Whether it’s Obama or Romney, the underlying priorities remain the same, and at the center of those priorities is a commitment to cut the deficit on the backs of workers and the poor.

Up to this point, the campaigning on either side has sought to lead voters into a state of mind in which substance and style bleed together as one. Because beyond style, both Obama and Romney share more in common on policy than they disagree. Even if Democrats and Republicans differ on how to get there, the goal is the same: safeguard the dominance of corporate power and point to the deficit as reason enough to march forward with the assault on the working class.

The article linked below offers a sharp and succinct analysis of this reality. As the article points out, “history shows that voting for the ‘lesser evil’ is no guarantee against the ‘greater evil.’ On the contrary, evil sometimes has a better shot if the ‘lesser’ paves the way and provides the façade.”

But while the politics of the lesser-evil prevails in the electoral realm, what counts the most for workers and the poor will be the politics of struggle on the shop floor and in the streets.

The presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is incredibly close.

It’s close in the way you read about every day in the media: Opinion polls show the two candidates are neck and neck, with just days to go. But it’s also close in ways you never hear about–not from the press, nor the candidates, nor their supporters. On important political questions, Obama and Romney stand so close to each other that their similarities outweigh their differences.

This isn’t what most people are talking about with less than a week to go before the election. But it’s what activists and people on the left have to consider as the call to vote for Obama in order to stop Romney reaches full volume.

The dynamic of the presidential race changed fundamentally with the first debate at the start of October, when the combination of Obama’s dismal performance and Romney’s image of seeming competence after a summer of missteps gave a burst of momentum to Republicans. Ever since, it has been a dead-even contest–according to the aggregation of opinion polls tracked at Pollster.com, Romney is barely ahead in the popular vote, while Obama has a slight advantage in the Electoral College.

But the broader dynamic of Election 2012 is mostly unchanged. The defining issue of American politics in the last four years has been the drive to impose austerity measures that make working people pay for the crisis, and on this question, Obama and Romney are closer to each other than their rhetoric suggests.

There are other issues, like abortion rights, where the differences between the candidates and especially their parties are clearer–though the hard truth is they aren’t as stark as they are usually portrayed. Moreover, the prospect of emboldened right-wingers gaining confidence from a Romney victory–and gloating over the defeat of the first African American president, who they have been heaping abuse on since day one–is stomach-turning.

But anyone who wants to vote for Obama as the lesser evil has to confront questions that have gone unasked during the campaign.

When it comes to “reforming” popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, to maintaining historically low tax rates on business, to continuing the teacher-bashing and the charterization of public schools, to cutting government programs that help the poor and vulnerable–on all these questions, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are fundamentally on the same side, though they may differ on the details.

Last month, the Chicago Teachers Union did something that no one thought possible a few years ago when the Great Recession took hold. Back then, the economic crisis and devastating budget cuts gave corporate-backed school “reformers” the conditions they needed to thrust the war on public education into high gear.

The Chicago teachers strike is a groundbreaking event in the fight to defend public schools and resurrect a fighting labor movement. Months of preperation went into the victorious strike that forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel to back down from his most damaging attacks against teachers. The union knew it needed to build alliances beyond labor and win the support of parents and communities before moving to strike. Its success in doing so was central to winning the standoff.

While teachers unions across the country have conceded to the corporate school “reform” agenda – agreeing to merit pay, attacks on seniority and a tidal wave of standardized testing – the CTU made a move unprecedented in this era. And the high stakes of the teachers’ daring fightback was lost on no one. By putting themselves on the picket line, they put the entire war against public education on trial. Its location, its actors, and its timing made it a trial with a national audience. The rank-and-file politics of the union injected militancy into a battle that was fought in the home city of President Obama during the height of the presidential election season – and against a cut-throat anti-union goon who helped craft Obama’s school “reform” agenda at the national level.

The teachers stared down the mayor and an entire political establishment bent on privatization – and they won. In the process, they taught other teachers and workers everywhere some powerful lessons.

The strike by the 26,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) in September has lessons for many people, inside Chicago and out.

It taught teachers around the country: You can challenge the attack on your jobs, your unions and your schools–and win. It taught students and parents: There’s an alternative to deteriorating conditions, school closures and the corporatization of education if we all fight together. And finally, for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the supposed Democratic “friends of labor” and corporate school “reformers”: You’d better think twice before you go after us again.

The schools showdown in Chicago, which the CTU rightly called “a fight for the very soul of public education,” forced everyone–from teachers and parents and community members to political leaders–to answer the question: Which side are you on?

The answer from most Chicagoans was plain to see on the streets–especially when they were clogged with mass protests, colored CTU bright red. Morning picket lines at schools in every neighborhood were strong, loud and enthusiastic, proving that teachers were ready for this fight. In the afternoon and over the weekend, teachers were joined by supporters for huge rallies and marches, held at City Hall and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) headquarters downtown, as well as in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Through it all, opinion polls showed that more people in Chicago sided with the teachers than the city. Support for the CTU was even stronger among parents of CPS students, despite the difficulties the strike caused for them and the propaganda offensive designed to pit them against the union.

Public sentiment turned sharply against Emanuel, whose arrogance and bullying made him the butt of jokes on picket signs and the target of chants like “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Rahm Emanuel has got to go!” There was plenty of anger for Rahm’s wealthy allies, too–like billionaire hotel heiress Penny Pritzker, a member of the mayor’s handpicked school board who skimmed off city funds that could go to schools in order to build a new hotel.

But Chicagoans also knew who they were for: the teachers. Ultimately, the CTU came to represent an alternative vision–for public schools, run with adequate funding, where every student and every teacher is valued; and, by extension, for government and the city as a whole, with different priorities that put people before business interests.

On the other side, Rahm Emanuel had his proponents of corporate school “reform”–for example, phony citizen’s groups like Democrats for Education Reform, which sponsored anti-teacher ads that seemed to run every five minutes during the strike.

Lurking behind such groups and posing as “concerned citizens” were the super-rich elite who stand to profit from closing public schools, opening for-profit charters and decimating teachers’ unions.

One “concerned citizen, ” Bruce Rauner, a wealthy venture capitalist and charter school backer who Emanuel put on the board of World Business Chicago, made the priorities of the city’s business and political establishment crystal clear at a seminar for the right-wing Illinois Policy Institute.

Calling the contract negotiations with the CTU “one battle in a very long-term fight,” Rauner said, “The union basically is a bunch of politicians elected to do certain things–get more pay, get more benefits, less work hours, more job security. That’s what they’re paid to do. They’re not about the students. They’re not about results.”

“It’s the lousy, ineffective, lazy teachers,” Rauner said. “They’re the ones that the union is protecting, and that’s where there’s a conflict of interest between the good teachers and the union bosses.”

Also in Emanuel’s corner were a few embarrassments for the former chief of staff to Barack Obama. Like Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who congratulated the Democratic mayor for taking on the CTU, and Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who denounced Chicago teachers as “thugs.” Fox News and the blowhards of right-wing talk radio discovered a new enemy on which to heap racist abuse in CTU President Karen Lewis.

But even with the right ranting at top volume, it was impossible to miss the fact that the teachers were taking on a Democratic mayor–and in the hometown of a Democratic president.

Plutocrats in Europe are continuing their march against the poor and working class. Their efforts to bleed workers dry has once again pushed unions in Greece to declare a nationwide general strike. And in Spain, protests this week turned violent as more austerity measures threaten the lives of workers already hurting from high unemployment and suffocating budget cuts.

Greek workers have endured massive cuts over the last several years and have repeatedly been forced to use the one thing they still have: the power to withhold their labor.

The country’s prime minister, Antonio Samaras, has been pushing a package of pension cuts and public salary reductions worth $14.6 billion next year in order to satisfy the conditions of its February aid package from the rest of Europe. In a country with 24 percent unemployment, those measures are already inciting protests and labor unrest.

Up to200,000 protested in Athensand major public services including transportation were ground to a halt. Smoke and teargas filled the streets in front of the parliament building where protesters clashed with police.

One might think European leaders would have gotten the hint the last couple of times Greeks struck against the priorities of the elite. But as much as workers have a huge stake in killing the project of austerity, the one percent is heavily vested in moving that project forward – even if it means throwing Europe into a maelstrom of social unrest.

In Spain, austerity is further fraying national unity – so much so that the country’s Catalonia region isthreatening to secede.

Police beat protesters near the Parliament in central Madrid [on Tuesday], firing rubber bullets and charging the crowds…The massive protests we’re seeing in Madrid today [are happening] in advance of what will likely be another austerity budget by the Spanish government. The people only suffer from continued austerity at a time of 25% unemployment. So they filled the Plaza de Espana and elsewhere to call for changes.

Through their action, European workers continue to provide one of the strongest cases against the politics of austerity. Their counterparts in the U.S., while more atomized and seemingly docile, have been standing up and striking back against corporate greed and budget cuts as well.

BeleagueredWalmart warehouse workershave taken the daring step of striking against their employers and focusing their pressure against the retail giant’s notoriously vicious anti-union policies. That kind of fightback is crucial in the U.S. where politicians – Republicans and Democrats alike – continue to push for the same anti-worker and anti-poor policies that are unraveling whole countries on the other side of the Atlantic.

In the last year, DHL claims it has fired 24 workers in Turkey for “performance related” reasons. But the express parcel delivery company is fooling no one. TÜMTİS, the Turkey Motor Vehicle and Transport Workers’ Union, has been trying to organize the DHL workers for more than a year. DHL management in Turkey has fired workers for trying to organize and threatened to fire other workers for joining TÜMTİS. The company is also refusing to meet with the union over the firings.

Between last April and November, eight workers were fired for what the DHL called poor performance and endangering worker safety and health. But the workers said managers openly threatened one worker at a time with dismissal for organizing.

TheInternational Transport Workers Federation(ITF) has been working with TÜMTİS to get the workers reinstated. Even after the ITF started talks with management in June, DHL fired seven more workers for supporting the organizing effort. Nine of the workers currently have cases pending in courts. Eight have been paid but haven’t gotten their jobs back despite a court order.

Sacked workers are currently standing outside the warehouses in an act of resistance over their unfair dismissal. TÜMTİS has made every attempt to engage local management and seek a resolution to the ongoing dismissals, but to no avail. Local management continues to approach workers who have joined TÜMTİS, reportedly telling them that they must resign from TÜMTİS or they will lose their job. The workers demand the right to become members of TÜMTİS, and organize a union in their workplace, free from intimidation and threat of dismissal.

Last week, DHL International’s Human Resources department agreed with Turkish managers. They said the firings were performance-related and the company is obeying Turkish law. They also said management doesn’t need to meet with TÜMTİS because the company doesn’t recognize the union as legally representing the workers.

Currently, 335 DHL Turkey workers are members of TÜMTİS. In addition to ITF,UNI Global Union is helping TÜMTİS and the workers organize free from harassment and intimidation by management at DHL Turkey.

Last year, TÜMTİS was bolstered by international labor solidarity from its brothers and sisters in the U.S. when members of theTeamsters union helped Turkish UPS workerswin the right to TÜMTİS representation after a drawn out battle with the company. DHL workers in Turkey derserve no less when it comes to global solidarity and support from working people in the U.S.

The one percent is catching fire in the form of an expanding strike by the janitors who clean the buildings of some of the largest corporations in the U.S. Hundreds of janitors in Houston who walked off the job last week are being joined by hundreds more this week aspicket lines extend to eight citiesacross the country.

The janitors – employed by contractors to clean office buildings for companies like Exxon Mobile, Shell Oil, and JP Morgan Chase – are striking against unfair labor practices. They are also demanding an end to poverty wages in a city recently named by Forbes as the number one city for millionaires.

Tomorrow, the Houston janitors’ unfair labor practices strike will spread to eight cities across the United States. Janitors, who are members of SEIU Local 1, will fan out across the country to establish picket lines against their janitorial contractors in Washington, Minneapolis, Seattle, Boston, San Ramon and Oakland. On Thursday, janitors in Los Angeles and Denver will also join the strike. Janitors in these cities have indicated that they will not cross the picket lines, thereby expanding the strike to key real estate in new cities.

The ULP strike that began last Tuesday is the first city-wide work stoppage by Houston janitors since 2006. Their contract expired on May 31 after asking for a modest raise from $8.35 to $10 per hour during negotiations. But the building owners and contractors insist that a five cent raise over five years is enough for the workers.

The bosses evidently believe the workers belong below the poverty line. But instead of just pushing brooms, the janitors pushed back. As a result they were met with harrassment and intimidation. Workers responded by calling for a city-wide strike on July 11. Three of the companies have retaliated futher against the building cleaners, illegally imposing unilateral changes by cutting off contributions to health and welfare funds.

The strike is now in its second week and includes more than 400 janitors at 18 different buildings in Houston, a city with glaring income inequality. While one in five workers in the city make less than $10 an hour, Houston leads the nation in annual growth for millionaires. According to SEIU, the city’s largest employers raked in more than $178 billion in profits last year. Union janitors on the other hand are stuck working part-time schedules and make less than $9,000 annually.

Labor journalist Josh Eidelson atIn These Timesexplains how SEIU is using sympathy pickets to win justice for janitors in Houston:

In some cities, SEIU janitors employed by some of the same companies have “conscience clauses” in their contracts, protecting their rise to honor picket lines by refusing work. That means that if a striking Houston worker traveled to such a city and began picketing the same company there, the workers inside could walk off the job, effectively spreading the strike throughout the country.

A similar use of the sympathy strike tactic was used last monthby sanitation workers who put up picket lines throughout the country in support of their brothers and sisters who were locked out by Republic Services/Allied Waste in Indiana. Solidarity proved successful when the company ended the lockout and began negotiating with the Indiana workers at the end of June.

Solidarity among SEIU janitors may soon bring a similar victory to them as well. The stakes are high in Houston. Holding the line far and wide could mean the difference between a hard loss for workers and a heavy blow against the one percent.

A new writing job in the labor movement has kept me from writing my own material more frequently both here at Subterranean Dispatches and other publications.

While I hope to produce a new piece in the near future, for now I’d like to feature some outside anaylsis on important developments in the month of June – including inspiring solidarity pickets that spread around the country among Teamster sanitation workers and some insights on Obama’s recent executive order protecting 800,000 undocumented youth from the threat of deportation.

But first my take on healthcare reform…

Stepping Away from Single-Payer

In one of the most high-profile Supreme Court cases in recent history and a fever-pitched media event, the country’s highest court closed out the month of June with a decision on the Obama administration’s healthcare reform law. The decision is understood as being hugely historic on both the right and the left. But there was a lot of confusion about the substance of the verdict that the Supreme Court finally handed down on the Affordable Care Act.

A crowd of supporters and opponents of the reform were equally stunned when it was confirmed that the justices had upheld the law in its entirely. Liberal supporters of Obama and the ACA were fully prepared for a ruling that would have struck down the individual mandate, thereby killing the rest of the law and dealing a major blow to Obama and the Democratic Party.

In fact, on the eve of the landmark decision some Democrats were expressing hope that the law would be upheld while promising to use a loss as an opportunity to again raise the flag for a single-payer healthcare system. For some on the left, the goal of taking the profit motive out of healthcare may have made losing sound better than winning at the Supreme Court today.

So it was surprising that the decision left even the most constitutionally controversial part of the law – the individial mandate – intact. The scene outside the courthouse was festive. Progressives who hoped that the law would be upheld were jubiliant, even as many admitted Obama’s healthcare reform is not enough. They say it is a big step toward universal healthcare (or single-payer, or Medicare for All – whatever one chooses to call it).

One of the leading groups that has been at the forefront of the movement for single-payer has also been at the forefront of healthcare delivery. And they had a somewhat different reaction.

“This should not be seen as the end of the efforts by health care activists for a permanent fix of our broken health-care system,” National Nurses United (NNU) wrote in response to the ruling. NNU, the largest nurses union in the country with 175,000 members, is among the most progressive and militant groups leading the charge for single-payer healthcare and other economic justice issues.

According to NNU:

The Affordable Care Act still leaves some 27 million people without health coverage, does little to constrain rising out of pocket health care costs, or to stop the all too routine denials of needed medical care by insurance companies because they don’t want to pay for it.

The U.S. outspends all other nations per capita on care, yet trails dozens of other nations, which have a national system, such as our Medicare program, in a wide array of vital barometers, including life expectancy. While some of those countries are also mired in economic troubles due to the global banking crash, the presence of a national health system has softened the blow on peoples’ health.

But the limitations of “Obamacare” may be more than that: they may in fact restrain efforts to reach a single-payer system that covers everyone.

As Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a single-payer advocacy group, explained back in 2010, “Instead of eliminating the root of the problem – the profit-driven, private health insurance industry – [the ACA] will enrich and further entrench these firms.

Today, NNU Co-President Karen Higgins explained further:

Even after this decision, we will continue to see patients who postpone filling prescription medications, or delay doctor-recommended diagnostic procedures or even life saving medical treatment because of the high out of pocket costs, or families faced with the terrible choice of paying for medical care or food or clothing, or who delay payment on medical bills at the risk of bankruptcy or a destroyed credit rating.

We will continue to see hospitals, insurance companies and drug companies engage in price gouging and insurance companies refusing to authorize treatment recommended by a doctor under the pretext it was “experimental” or “not medically necessary,” euphemisms for care that doesn’t meet the real test of a profit driven bottom line.

And we will continue to see the U.S. falling farther behind other countries in a wide range of health barometers, including life expectancy, deaths of women of child bearing age, and long waits for care, even though we spend twice as much per capita or more than those other nations.

Medicare is far more effective than the broken private system in controlling costs and the waste that goes to insurance paperwork and profits, and it is universally popular, even among those who bitterly opposed the Obama law.

There is no doubt that there are positive elements of “Obamacare” and today’s Supreme Court decision to uphold it. Certainly millions will continue to benefit from the elimination of lifetime limits and young adults will remain covered by their parents’ healthcare plans. And the ban on denying coverage for preexisting conditions remains in place. All that is good.

But millions more will still be forced into buying private health insurance – an idea that actually originated from the playbook of free-enterprise arch-conservatives at the Heritage Foundation back in 1989.

“The ACA perpetuates a dominant role for the private insurance industry,” PNHP said today in response to the ruling. “Each year, that industry siphons off hundreds of billions of health care dollars for overhead, profit and the paperwork it demands from doctors and hospitals; it denies care in order to increase insurers’ bottom line; and it obstructs any serious effort to control costs.”

The health insurance lobbies won big today. They won a captive market of uninsured individuals dropped into their laps by the federal government. So it was a good day for Obama and the health insurance industry. And it should also have be a great day for conservatives who once saw the individual mandate as a right-wing position on healthcare reform – until Obama adopted it as his own.

Constitutional or not, the individual mandate is a boon for private health insurance companies and a real loss for single-payer.

Over the past month, Teamsters in five cities refused work in solidarity with locked-out sanitation workers in Evansville, Indiana. The Evansville labor dispute is the second in three months to feature sympathy strikes against Republic Services. This rare tactic represents a major escalation in the Teamsters’ struggle with the company, and it’s poised to intensify this week.

Before the National Labor Relations Act established legal collective bargaining rights within discrete bargaining units, and the Taft-Hartley Amendments banned many solidarity actions, strikes would commonly spread from one group of workers to other worksites in the industry, or to other workers in the supply chain. Today, such solidarity strikes are rare.

The Teamsters’ ability to pull them off rests in part on a “conscience clause” in some of their contracts.

Barack Obama’s decision to end the deportation threat hanging over the heads of 800,000 undocumented youth is something immigrant rights activists have organized for years to achieve. But the measure comes with unjust restrictions–and no one should forget that it stands in contrast to the administration’s policies of the past three and a half years, especially the dramatic increase in deportations since 2009.

Obama’s June 15 announcement that the federal government would extend temporary legal status to some undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children was greeted with tears of joy among many families who have lived in the constant fear of being torn apart.

“This move has concrete and immediate impacts,” said Felipe Matos, an immigrant rights activist. “Now I won’t have to be scared whenever I encounter the police. I’ll be able to freely open a bank account…I’ll even be able to drive without fear of deportation.”

Among immigrant rights activists, however, the enthusiasm for Obama’s measure is dampened by the many restrictions and qualifications placed on undocumented youth who wish to apply to stay in the U.S. under the policy. Plus, the administration has made promises about curbing deportations before–and the expulsion of the undocumented has continued.